Economics, Business & Management

A few years ago Dr Timothy Kyng was looking at Retirement Homes with his mother. As a researcher who specialises in the analysis of complex financial products, Tim did not expect that the contracts on offer would tax his analytical capacity. There is a lot of variation in the entry fees, ongoing fees and so called “deferred management fees” across the retirement village industry. It is difficult and time consuming to get the details of how the contracts work and it is even more difficult to compare one with another. Comparison shopping is hard to do but Tim set out to make financial comparisons of retirement village contracts easier by computing a “comparison rent metric”, similar in concept to the comparison interest rate that banks must quote to consumers when they lend money for home mortgages.

Due to increase in the cross-cultural diversity within the auditing profession and globalisation of accounting firms, auditing standard setters and practitioners have emphasised on the need of understanding cultural influences on auditing, especially in non-Anglo-American contexts.

Associate Professor John Dumay of the Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance is an expert in knowledge management and a member of the Australian Government Consultative Committee on Knowledge Capital. After working as a consultant over fifteen years, John joined academia and has applied many of the techniques learned throughout his consulting career to the academy. John applies his research to real industry problems, treating collaboration projects as consulting assignments.

Distinguished Professor James Guthrie has a long history of research impact upon industry and government. His work on performance reporting, accounting for intellectual capital and sustainability accounting have pioneered new approaches to accounting. James has regularly been sought out by government and industry for advice and ideas.

Since the introduction of competitive electricity markets and power exchanges the amount of risk borne by market participants has increased substantially. Electricity cannot be economically stores and requires immediate delivery.

Professor Chris Patel continues to cultivate the Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance’s strong reputation for higher degree research in international accounting. This strength was founded on the pioneering work of the late Associate Professor Jill McKinnon and Professor Graeme Harrison.

Stanley Choi has investigated Australia’s Continuous Disclosure Regime to identify if the Responsive Enforcement Strategy initiated in the early 2000s by the Australian Securities Investment Commission actually works.

Only 3.5 per cent of large and 4.1 per cent of small and medium sized firms in Australia were reported to be collaborating with higher education or public research institutions. In comparison to other leading countries Australia is falling behind in research collaboration.